On this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” we’ll have works by birthday celebrants – and strange bedfellows – György Kurtág and Luigi Boccherini.
Kurtág, the aphoristic Hungarian master, was born on this date in 1929; Boccherini, the “Haydn of the Mediterranean,” lived from 1743 to 1805.
Kurtág studied at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest. It was there that he met his wife and forged a lifelong friendship with György Ligeti. Following the Hungarian uprising of 1956, he spent an extended period in Paris, where he studied with Olivier Messiaen, Darius Milhaud, and Schoenberg pupil Max Deutsch. It was also during this time that he was introduced to the music of Anton Webern and the plays of Samuel Beckett. He returned to Budapest, where eventually he wound up teaching at his alma mater for 26 years.
It is fortunate that Kurtág has been so long-lived, since it wasn’t until an age when most people contemplate retirement, in his 60s, that his international reputation really began to take off. Gradually, he became regarded as one of the most respected composers of his time.
Kurtág is a meticulous artist. His works are like finely honed miniatures. But these are not pieces for display in the curio cabinet; rather exquisitely crafted microcosms, notable for their poetry and flashes of expressive intensity.
“Hommage à Mihály András,” written in 1977 for the 60th birthday of the Hungarian composer, conductor, and cellist, is a set of twelve “microludes.” Each one corresponds to the twelve degrees of the chromatic scale. Collectively, they span no more than ten minutes in length. Individually, they are the distillation of a lifetime’s worth of experience. The work was performed at Marlboro in 1997 by violinists Robert Waters and Catherine Szepes, violist Jessica Troy, and cellist Siegfried Palm.
Luigi Boccherini composed his music in another world, the court of Madrid, where he was in the employ of the Infante Don Luis, younger brother of the King of Spain. While the Guitar Quintet No. 7 in E minor, G. 451, of 1797, adheres to Classical form, its minor key suggests, at times, an undercurrent of wistfulness that feints toward an emotional preoccupation of a sort that would later come to dominate the Romantic era. We’ll hear a 1974 recording featuring guitarist David Starobin, violinists Pina Carmirelli & Philip Setzer, violist Philipp Naegele, and cellist Peter Wiley.
This unlikely duo, Boccherini and Kurtág, will be united, paradoxically, in contrasts – Béla Bartók’s “Contrasts.” Though separated by 45 years, Bartók and Kurtág were both born in the Hungarian-speaking Banat region of modern-day Romania.
“Contrasts,” of 1938, is a raw, fascinating work. Inspired by Hungarian and Romanian dance melodies, the piece was commissioned by Benny Goodman, of all people. This trio – for clarinet, violin, and piano – contains passages of bitonality and frenzied dances for scordatura violin. We’ll hear it performed at the 1998 Marlboro Music Festival by clarinetist Anthony McGill, violinist Catherine Cho, and pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard.
There will be ample pálinka to offset the paella, as we celebrate Kurtág and Boccherini on their birthdays, on the next Music from Marlboro, this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page
Concise, but not curt: happy birthday, György Kurtág
